Have you ever hit the ocean for a family beach day, savoring the surf, sand and salty air only to feel there was something missing? An aura of deep-seated bitterness? The sweet sting of pure, unbridled disdain? The burning glare of an angry George Costanza?
On the latter count at least, Etsy seller Ann Lucchini of ShopCafeDisco has got you covered. For just $30.99, she will superimpose a sneering Costanza into the background of any family photo.
Like most hyper-specific business ventures, Lucchini’s Photoshop services date back to the waning days of quarantine, when she observed several Seinfeld fans yearning for more George in their personal pictures.
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“I was following a few Facebook Seinfeld fan pages and noticed people were creating posts with their photos and asking if someone from the group could add ‘the photobomb George’ in said photo,” Lucchini tells me.
After “a few” rounds of heeding these community calls, the Etsy entrepreneur decided to take her skills to the e-commerce giant.
Nearly four years — and 1,570 orders later — business is booming. Beyond launching a line of stand-alone Costanza stickers “in case anyone wanted to add a rogue George into a physical photo or place,” and politely pondering a Mr. Kruger-inspired reverse-cartooning service at my suggestion (“I’m always open to new ideas,” she jokes), Lucchini has discovered that a very small subset of fans apparently find the sitcom, well, “sponge-worthy.”
Though Lucchini maintains that potential clients “mostly keep things PG,” as “most of the photos are for a friend/family member,” she’s no stranger to weird requests. “I did have one customer suggest I Photoshop her husband’s head on George’s ‘The Timeless Art of Seduction’ body/pose, and I did,” she shares, noting that she’s since added edits to the sultry portrait as “another listing on my Etsy.”
Whether or not you’d shell out three tenners for a retroactive beach day with George, one thing is certain: It still makes a much better gift than a donation to The Human Fund.